pre-planning

The campaign to #KeepAlive2155 was held over an entire week of activities in and around our community of Arlington Heights. Why 2155? The Illinois Dept. of Public Health projects that 2155 Illinois residents will die from an accidental overdose in 2018. In this spirit, our efforts and our goal is to reduce those numbers and someday eliminate them by training 2155 people (statewide) in overdose prevention and reversal strategies. This includes equipping and providing attendees of the class with Naloxone kits.

We coordinated closely with Live4Lali, an amazing organization working to proactively take on this epidemic; educate, counsel and heal families who are victimized by Opioid Overdosing. We came into contact with Live4Lali during a service at our funeral home for a young man who accidentally overdosed. When the family asked if classes could be held on how to administer Naloxone as part of the visitation services for their son, it made us think hard about how we, the Glueckert Family could get more involved.

We’ve seen too many lives shortened by this terrible addiction. It is emotionally difficult for us too when we are providing services to families who are torn apart by opioid addiction. As most of these victims are young; their services are almost always very large. A large and supportive community has come together to support these families.

Live4Lali worked closely with us to develop a custom program we could conduct during Opioid Awareness Week. During the week, we had 12 training sessions over 5 days on administering Naloxone and gave a kit to each attendee. 110 people came for the training. It was wonderful to see the participation. We know lives will be saved as a result of this training and awareness. We invite everyone to join us in this effort. For our part, we’ll keep training people and equipping them with Naloxone kits as long as people will keep signing up for classes to help end this epidemic.

Illinois Lt. Governor Evelyn Sanguinetti became personally involved in this cause and attended the Friday evening candlelight vigil and ceremony commemorating local lives lost to an accidental drug overdose. So many families victimized by this epidemic were there too. It was sad and beautiful and uplifting all at the same time. Seeing people minister to one another, support each other and share their loving memories of their family members and friends was inspirational.

Our classes were so well attended, we’ve added another one on October 11, 2018, at 6 pm at Glueckert Funeral Home. We already have several sign-ups, and we’re inviting more! Several members of our staff are Certified Trainers in the program. Please join us. Just sign up and we’ll take care of the rest. Our sign up list is linked below.